I well know why Lady de Courcy has had me here: how could I help knowing it?
She has been so foolish in her plans that ten times a day she has told her own secret.

But I have said to myself twenty times, that if she were crafty, you were honest." "And am I dishonest ?" "I have laughed in my sleeve to see how she played her game, and to hear others around playing theirs; all of them thinking that they could get the money of the poor fool who had come at their beck and call; but I was able to laugh at them as long as I thought that I had one true friend to laugh with me.

But one cannot laugh with all the world against one." "I am not against you, Miss Dunstable." "Sell yourself for money! why, if I were a man I would not sell one jot of liberty for mountains of gold.

What! tie myself in the heyday of my youth to a person I could never love, for a price! perjure myself, destroy myself--and not only myself, but her also, in order that I might live idly! Oh, heavens! Mr Gresham! can it be that the words of such a woman as your aunt have sunk so deeply in your heart; have blackened you so foully as to make you think of such vile folly as this?
Have you forgotten your soul, your spirit, your man's energy, the treasure of your heart?
And you, so young! For shame, Mr Gresham! for shame--for shame." Frank found the task before him by no means an easy one.

He had to make Miss Dunstable understand that he had never had the slightest idea of marrying her, and that he had made love to her merely with the object of keeping his hand in for the work as it were; with that object, and the other equally laudable one of interfering with his cousin George.
And yet there was nothing for him but to get through this task as best he might.